For Ask an Economist this week I have a question from Hal who asks, “What is the difference between a ‘non-profit’ and a ‘not for profit’?”
In order to address this question, I think it’s important to discuss what separates a for-profit business from these two forms of organization.
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Employee turnover has surged since the pandemic, and the need to replace and train new employees at high volume has hampered productivity for businesses, according to The New York Times.
More than 4.5 million workers voluntarily left their jobs in November 2021, the highest since the government began tracking this data 20 years earlier, and the turnover rate remains significantly higher than it was before the pandemic, according to the NYT. Businesses are struggling with the costs of high turnover; new employees take time to become productive, and existing employees lose productivity because of the time they spend training others.
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Private companies added 127,000 jobs in November, missing investor expectations by more than 70,000 to post the worst result since January 2021, according to private payroll firm ADP and CNBC Monday.
The addition represented a sharp decline from the 239,000 new jobs reported by the firm in October. Industries that were most directly impacted by higher interest rates, such as construction, were hit the hardest by job cuts, while consumer-facing industries, such as hospitality, largely weathered the storm, according to ADP.
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Newly released data from the Commerce Department show what some people have been saying for months: The nation is in recession.
Furthermore, the Biden administration’s cherry-picking of data has come back to bite it, with even its selected data points now being revised to indicate a recession. And while these numbers confirm the economy shrank in the first half of the year, the rest of this year holds little promise of recovery.
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A new labor market survey found that a majority of employers, particularly restaurants, still cannot find enough workers.
The new report from Alignable said that 83% of restaurants can’t find enough workers. Overall, the report found that “63% of all small business employers can’t find the help they need, after a year of an ongoing labor shortage.”
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President Joe Biden unveiled a new 2023 budget proposal Monday along with major tax increases to help pay for it.
Biden’s budget, which comes in at about $5.8 trillion, is not expected to become law, but presidential budgets help set the legislative priorities for the year to come.
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U.S. retail sales jumped in June, boosted by states widely loosening coronavirus restrictions and businesses returning to full capacity.
Retail sales increased 0.6% and totaled $621.3 billion in June, according to the Department of Commerce report released Wednesday. The monthly increase was driven by general merchandise, including food service, clothing, personal care, electronics and gasoline sales, the report showed.
“Sectors that were buoyed by the pandemic are slowing down a little bit, but not to a degree that I’d be concerned about,” Square economist Felipe Chacon told The Wall Street Journal. “Household finances have been bolstered by a few rounds of stimulus spending, so it bodes pretty well.”
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President Donald Trump announced the preliminary results of his administration’s efforts to deregulate the federal government.
Before taking office, Trump pledged to roll back two regulations for every new regulation added in Washington, D.C. However, that ratio has since increased to seven regulations rolled back for every new one created, Trump said.
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